Page 152 of In the Pursuit of Haven
I’d found it.
Rushing back up the stairs, I peered over the railing and saw a dinghy sailboat closing in on the island. The occupants inside threw their hands up in the air and waved their arms at me. They’d been heading this way the whole time, and in a few moments, I realized why.
One of them had long red hair flying behind her in a mass of curls. The guy next to her was broad-shouldered and stiff. Brecker and Caitlyn were coming for me. And was that Bette Ann with them?
It certainly was. I’d just discovered their informant.
Bette Ann was a Shepherd of the Relics. I wasn’t sure what I thought about that.
Chapter Forty-One
“How did you get stuck in there?” I heard Bette Ann’s voice on the outside of the steel door.
“Jessie is trying to keep me safe!” I shouted out. “He’s on Misery Island to get that treasure. Luther Leon was blackmailing him to work for him. I think Luther’s a murderer! At least I’m positive he killed Matthew!”
I listened to the muttered complaints on the other side from my aunt’s best friend. “I never trusted that man,” she told Caitlyn and Brecker. “I kept telling Haven he was trouble.”
“He is!” I cried out. “He was pretending to be our friend the whole time.” Like he’d done to Haven, my grandmother, my grandfather—all of us! And while I was going on about my grievances, I had another. “Haven never told me that Robert was my grandfather!”
“I always thought that was a mistake,” Bette Ann said. She tried to lower her voice, “You think you can get her out?”
“Maybe,” a male voice I barely recognized as Brecker’s said in return. I wasn’t sure how he could manage to break me from my tower, unless he had the same emergency worker equipment on his boat that the sheriff in Salem had. Hunter and his crew certainly hadn’t.
“Bette Ann, are you a Shepherd of the Relics?” I asked.
She was silent before she answered, “It’s complicated, but uh… yeah, I guess you could say that.” She made a squawking sound—presumably in reaction to whatever Brecker was doing on the other side of the door. I heard a heavy clang that rang through the tower.
“Out of the way,” I heard Caitlyn say. “I’ve got this.”
“You’ve got this…?” Brecker’s incredulous tone mirrored how I felt. Caitlyn wasn’t a very big girl—in fact, she was tiny and she let out tiny grunts as she worked on whatever mechanism that was jamming the door.
I rested my hand on the metal. “Jessie said Luther was using Haven to blackmail him.” I waited for Bette Ann to say something about those ugly events from the past, but she stayed silent. Had she known what had happened on that island? I pressed her again: “Jessie went to Haven’s and asked her to give up uh… the locket.”
“Ah yes, well…” Bette Ann made a sympathetic noise on the other side of the door. “Haven took that very badly, you know. She wouldn’t stop crying when she came to me. She kept going on about the Crabbs and how they couldn’t let go of that treasure. She was sure Jessie would die in all this and leave you heartbroken like she’d been.”
The thought that Haven had such a low opinion of Jessie until the end made me sad. “She was wrong about him, you know.”
“I told her as much, dear… though, I must be honest, when I saw him talking treasure with that woman at the pub, I began to suspect Haven was right about him all along.”
“It wasn’t his fault!” I cried.
A tiny click followed my words, along with a tiny shout of celebration, and I was swallowing back any doubts I had of my tiny jail breaker’s skills when the door shrieked open.
Caitlyn stepped back, putting the bobby pins back into her hair.
“Well done,” Brecker seemed more surprised with his girlfriend’s capabilities than I was. “That was… unexpected.”
She shrugged a defiant shoulder. “In case you haven’t noticed, I have skills. Who knew?”
“Yeah, but…”
I let Brecker grumble out his surprise as I sailed past him to get to Bette Ann. I wrapped my arms around her, so happy to see such a familiar and trustworthy face. “We have to get to Jessie! Luther’s crew is going to set off a fire if they make the wrong move.”And they most certainly would.“They’ll die without me!”
“Yes, yes, my dear,” Bette Ann said, “of course we’ll get him help, but I don’t think you should go down there either. None of you should!”
“I’m going,” Brecker said. Glancing over Bette Ann’s shoulder, I saw he had a shovel. That must’ve been what he’d used on the door.
I swallowed. “How well do you know these guys, Bette Ann?” I jerked my head toward Brecker and Caitlyn.
